France’s president François Hollande has announced that children are among the dead after what officials say was a deliberate attack when a truck drove into Bastille Day revelers in the resort city.
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Breaking ranks with official expressions of grief, Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the attacks were ” consequences of decades of a policy of multiculturalism and political correctness” in the European Union. It comes eight months after ISIS gunmen and suicide bombers attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris, killing 130 people.
President Obama called the attack on Nice an “appalling attack on the freedom and peace that we cherish” and said the hearts of Americans are with the people of France, in remarks Friday.
Thousands of people were packed along the Promenade des Anglais for the fireworks show when a truck accelerated through the crowd, fatally crushed people, including children, for more than a mile. “It was completely insane, the crowd panicked and everyone was trying to flee”.
“The motorcyclist attempted to overtake the truck and even tried to open the driver’s door, but he fell and ended up under the wheels of the truck”, Richard Gutjahr, 42, told AFP on Friday.
Newspaper Nice-Matin quoted unidentified sources as saying the driver was a 31-year-old local of Tunisian origin.
The truck was still where it had come to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets.
The so-called Islamic State urged its followers to attack French people with vehicles well before the deadly attack in Nice.
Explosives and grenades reportedly found in the back of the truck don’t appear to have been used in the attack, she says.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks transformed jetliners into weapons for mass murder. He was given a 6-month suspended sentence in March because it was a first offense. The motorcyclist fell to the ground, coming within inches of being struck by truck tires that partly crushed the motorcycle, but got up and briefly climbed aboard the side of the accelerating truck before jumping off again. “It is urgent now that it be declared”, she said on Twitter. A long stretch of seaside road and boardwalk, the promenade – packed with hundreds celebrating Bastille Day – would have been almost impossible to police and to secure, said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert and the director of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.
“I saw bodies flying like bowling pins along its route. Heard noises, cries that I will never forget”.
“France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy”, President Francois Hollande said in a dawn address. Jean-Pierre Amet/ReutersFrench Republican guards lower the flag to half-staff at the Élysée presidential palace in Paris on July 15.
Hollande spoke to the nation hours after the attack and extended France’s state of emergency by three months.
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“It’s beyond speech”, said Taghrid Abou Hassan, the president of Alliances Française Halifax and a professor in the department of French at Dalhousie University. We will “destroy this vile terrorist organization”.
